Awakening
by Lady Aeryn
Summary: A short Anakin/Vader piece; Anakin wakes up after his transformation. Couple of minor swear words.


Awakening

By [Lady Aeryn][1]

_Slightly updated version of the Anakin/Vader story I posted a while back.__Initially an installment I wrote for an Episode III round robin story "My Dear Padme: Anakin's Death," but I thought could stand well on its own.Acknowledgements still go to **Hiroko01** of TheForce.Net's Jedi Council for starting the story, and **Mara Jade, Emperor's Hand** for continuing it, and allowing me to add to it._

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The two sabers clashed, red on green, blue eyes locked on blue.One pair filled with pleading and hopelessness, the other with impassioned, pure rage at the other.His eyes.

_No.I don't want to be here.Not back here.Of all the places my mind had to bring me back here, where I… I…_

They clashed again, and again, forcing the duel closer and ever closer to the edge of the cliff which stood over the pit of molten lava.Obi-Wan continued to plead to his former Padawan to end this now, to stop— but they fell on deaf ears.

"_You're the one who did this, Kenobi! Not me,"_Anakin bit at his opponent, delivering a blow that had Obi-Wan not blocked it, would have chopped his hair to about the level of his armpits.The collision of the blades made a sharp hissing sound and sent sparks through the sulfuric atmosphere of the cavern.Both duelists were soaked with perspiration due to the intense heat, which grew ever stronger as the lava pit's edge drew nearer.Both were breathing heavily, but with still enough circulating air in their lungs for one of them to scream at the other.

"_Where is my wife?!"_The thought repeated in his mind, over and over— his mind reeking with Obi-Wan's betrayal.

Obi-Wan had taken Padméaway from him.His own wife— had stolen her, hidden her away in a place far beyond the reach of her husband— and then he had the nerve to keep him away from her, in the name of the promise he'd made to Anakin, to protect his beloved wife.He had taken Anakin's request to keep Padmé safe from harm too far… C_ontemptuous bastard._

_ _

_"Where is she?"_

How _dare_ he do that— who was he to tell him when he could see his own wife?

His dear Padmé, his angel...He could feel her, the warm softness of her presence… but he could not see her.He could not see where she was.She was lost to him.It was more than he could stand.

Gods, how he missed her.

_What gave him the right?!_

_ _

The duel raged on, and Obi-Wan must have sensed the end was near for him— for he went on the offensive at last, driving green strikes through Anakin's defense.Anakin was caught off guard, and both were so focused that neither noticed the imminent nearness of the lava pit— until it was too late.

The heel of Anakin's boot caught on the edge of the cliff— but the volcanic rock was crumbly, not suited to support human weight.He tried to bring himself back on balance— but only succeeded in destroying the rock completely, his foothold lost.

He fell.

_ _

_"Anakin!Nooooooo!"_

For a few moments, there was nothingness, hot air hurtling past him…

The next thing he felt was the sudden horrid burning, the lava crawling up his body… the last thing he saw was the contorted image of Obi-Wan's face, staring down at him…

And then _her_ face, dark tresses framing her head as she shook it sadly at what her beloved had become, lovely dark eyes beseeching him, beckoning to him….

Scorning him.

His eyes snapped open, his breathing fast and heavy, in a combination of relief and anger—relief that the horrid dream had ended… but anger at the memory of that encounter.

And what it had cost him.

The breathing slowed, a breathing that he now noticed sounded like the respirating of a demon lurking in the shadows.Not like a human.

His eyes were open, but the sight of the medbay ceiling above him was different from when he had last seen it.It still looked the same, but was… he couldn't really explain it, but it was almost as if he wasn't seeing it at all, that it was somehow being fed to him.The sheets were gone, he realized— as was the machinery that had been hooked by horrendous tubes to nearly orifice of his ragged body, keeping the barely functioning flesh functioning.The dream-induced weariness wore off, and he became acutely aware of a weight on his head, that made it heavy and difficult to lift.Anakin reached a hand (a hand that he noted now wore a leather glove) to his face—

And found he could no longer touch it.The sore, tender lava-scarred flesh of his face was gone.All he felt was a horrid cold mask of plasteel, no doubt a mechanical mockery of the human face that resided in it.He sat up quickly, the weight of the new mask painfully making itself prominent as his head was nearly snapped back by the inertia and weight of the mask— and the shock that his attempt to sit had actually succeeded.

"Ah, Lord Vader.I'm pleased to see you've finally rejoined the land of the living."Anakin turned his aching head towards the sound of the voice, the radiating dark sense of that presence filling Anakin to the core with hungering power.His weak body suddenly felt rejuvenated, and he desperately sucked the dark energy into himself like a Sarlaac would its prey.

While Anakin had changed, some things had stayed the same.Emperor Palpatine's hideously wrinkled skin was barely visible under the dark folds of the robe— a robe markedly similar to the one he had worn as Darth Sidious, yet somehow different— but then maybe that was just Anakin.

_No.You're not Anakin anymore.You stopped being him a long time ago._When exactly he couldn't be sure; the line between his old self and Darth Vader was so hopelessly blurred at times, he couldn't remember when exactly Anakin Skywalker had ended and Vader had begun.

Yet, at least.

"I see the medics did a commendable job with your recovery," Palpatine nodded in approval."I must say I rather prefer this appearance to your old one.Much more intimidating."

"Yes," Vader murmured, in a voice that was no longer his own— deep and mechanized, not with the elegant inflections Anakin Skywalker had used when he had spoken.No matter how he felt, angry or despaired, or not, his voice sounded the same.His emotions were inconveyable.Piece by piece, Skywalker had died— or maybe he still was.Whatever the case may have been then, one thing was certain: he wasn't the man he had been before.

The Emperor chuckled softly, and a lipless smile could just be made out under his hood—most people might not have seen it so clearly, but to Vader's new optical sensors it was as clear as the desert sand glare from Tatooine's twin suns."The voice, too, I see.I suppose I should have expected no less— they would have dearly suffered had they… erred."The burning yellow eyes sharply focused on Vader."Can you move?"

Wordlessly, Anakin moved his legs— mechanical replacements the exact length of his old ones— to turn and sit on the edge of the barely padded medical platform that had been his home for countless weeks.Another bit of movement, and he was standing up, towering over the shrouded form of his Master.

"Excellent, excellent.Your motor functions don't seem to have suffered."_Aside from the fact that they aren't mine anymore._"Now, if you will come with me, Lord Vader— I have something of a recovery gift for you."

************************

It was cold, black, metallic and almost spherical— almost like a giant practice remote, taking up a good portion of the hold that served as Vader's spartan quarters.With the press of a button by Palpatine, the sphere split vertically, the top lifting up to reveal a static white chamber, filled with machinery and a large chair in the center, which faced a private viewscreen on the far wall of the quarters.

"Your personal meditation chamber," the Emperor proclaimed proudly, "a marvel of Imperial engineering.Self-contained atmosphere, biomedical hookups."He turned to his apprentice, who had donned a dark flowing cape, hooked by a small chain around his neck."The one place where you will be able to exist free of the biomechanical armor you wear so well— you will be able to practice your dark side meditations, and if you wish…" he gestured to the wretched biomechanical devices in the chamber, which made Vader's leather-clad skin crawl at the memory of the medbay… "another can be built, but I think you'll agree this will adequately suffice for now."

Vader simply stared at the shiny black shell.In its reflective surface, he finally saw a glimpse of the new body he wore.Skull-like, his mask was warped and twisted.His body was covered in leather and armor, machinery in the places where flesh had been horribly burned away, still hooked up to his internal systems.No, he was no longer hooked to the machinery— the machinery was now permanently hooked up to _him._The only difference between this suit and the bed in the medbay was the fact that he could walk in this.Really, he wasn't sure if this was at all preferable.

The twisted reflection stared back at him just as simply as he had at it.He was a demon by nearly every possible specification.Including his own.In a way, he was relieved—the mask covered up that scarred mass of tissue that passed for a human face, that reminder of the weak man he had been.With the mask on he would never have to worry about seeing that face, that man again.Tearing his focus off the mockery of a reflection, he shifted his mechanical-enhanced gaze to the chamber itself.

It looked like a prison cell to him.When he went in there he would be completely cut off from the outside world, surrounded by the medbay-like sterile white.Even though he would be able to breathe on his own, it would only be in that small, confined space.He would still be a slave to the machinery in exchange to keep his dark, bitter heart beating.

A slave…

_You're still nothing but a damned slave_, a voice welled up suddenly from inside of him, from a person long gone._You've never been anything but a damned slave._

In an impulsive rage, Vader crushed the voice, sending it down back into the depths from whence it came.

Palpatine must have caught the brief whiff of anger from his apprentice, for he smiled."Very good, my young apprentice.Your anger is strong, a deadly power.But you must not hold back— your anger serves you, and it can not do that if it is buried away."

"Yes, my Master."

Palpatine's smile became a horridly twisted grin."I'll leave you two alone.Why don't you break it in… get a feel for it?"

"As you wish," Vader said simply, biting back the sarcastic remark he would rather have made.He bowed slightly as the robed figure slowly made his way from the massive hold, his cackling echoing faintly in the huge metal walls.

When he was alone, he made his way reluctantly into the chamber.As Vader seated himself in the central chair of the pod, the black shell of the chamber began to close around him once more, leaving him isolated… yet still not completely alone.

_Slave..._

   [1]: http://www.geocities.com/anakin_and_amidala/



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